


stare through my shadow

by winterfool



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Some light angst, and jester's worried about him, and sorely needed introspection, because fjord and his low wisdom make stupid stupid decisions, ends with some fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 07:48:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16929294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfool/pseuds/winterfool
Summary: Fjord isn't great at reading people, but even he can see Jester's not happy after what happened in Dashilla's lair (spoilers for episode 44).





	stare through my shadow

A chill wind blew across the deck as Fjord stepped out on to it, bringing with it a slant of light, cold rain that ran down his neck and beneath his armour. It reminded him of the ghostly touch of Dashilla’s magic and he shivered, glancing to the rear of the ship and what they had left behind.

They had mostly outrun the storm now, putting several miles of ocean between themselves and the Sea Fury’s lair, but its bruised darkness still seemed to hang over them. Night had not so much fallen as slipped in almost unnoticed under the cover of the shadows, and although stars were visible ahead of them all that could be seen behind was the shifting, roiling mass of clouds, illuminated every now and then by a crackling flash of lightning. 

Staring back at it, Fjord curled his right hand into a fist. The gash on his palm was just a thin line now, like a scar that had been there for several years, but the memory of biting pain as he drew his blade across it and the warmth as he slammed it down on to the table was still fresh.

He could have brought the ship down, for his curiosity.

 _Was it worth it?_ a voice questioned in the recesses of his mind.

He wasn’t sure. 

Shaking his head, he turned away from the view behind and looked back towards the bow of the ship. Unlike many of his crewmates, he had always enjoyed taking the night shift on the sea – well, on clear nights he had, anyway. There was something oddly peaceful about it, when the ship was quieter and the reflection of the lanterns strung along the gunwhale flashed in time with the ebb and flow of the waves like a thousand tiny glittering pieces of a golden mosaic.

The memories washed over him now as he walked across the deck, past the mizzenmast towards the railing, his boots thudding softly on the wood. 

Coming to the port-side edge, he rested his hands on the railing and breathed in deeply the salty scent of the sea air. He had been so caught up in all the adventures the Mighty Nein had been having in the Empire and the Nicodranas, that he hadn’t realised how much he had missed this until they had inadvertently ended up with _The Mist(ake)_. 

Even when everything had gotten so twisted and uncertain with Avantika, there had a been a part of him that had felt at home simply for being on board a ship again. 

A flash of blue out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he looked over to see Jester had found place to perch on the beakhead. Her cloak was wrapped around her shoulders but her hood was down now the rain was drying up, and her hair was swirling loosely round her neck in the breeze – it was getting longer, Fjord realised, and would reach her shoulders soon. 

She had her journal open in her hands but she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to its pages; she was staring off into the distance, her brow netted into a frown.

Fjord would be the first to admit he wasn’t always great at reading people. He wasn’t good at picking out the nuances of people’s expressions and seeing below the surface, not the way Caduceus was. More often he had to try to put together the pieces of what people said and how they acted to guess at what might be going on inside their heads. But even he could see something was bothering Jester. She couldn’t quite look him in the eye after they got back on board the ship and had been quiet all afternoon and evening. It made him feel … off balance. Tense. Wrong, somehow. 

Something that he thought had been fixed after they left Darktow, after they had talked, after she had been by his side while he faced his past, had broken again. 

_Why?_ He wondered. _What do I do now?_

“You scared her,” a soft voice said from the shadows to his left.

Fjord started, spinning round. He hadn’t even noticed Yasha standing a short distance away, arms folded, looking out at the storm clouds.

Had he spoken out loud without realising? Or had Yasha just been able to tell what he was thinking from his expression? She never said much, preferring to keep her own counsel, and Fjord often wondered just how much she saw with those mismatched eyes.

“I, ah, wh-what do you mean?” 

“Down below. You scared her.” When Fjord continued to stare at her blankly, she added, “With the table. And the blood.”

Oh.

His stomach clenched, and he balled his right hand into a fist again.

In a quiet voice, he repeated, “I scared her?”

The thought made him feel … wretched, in a way he didn’t have the words to describe. For so much of his life, people had looked him askance, wariness and fear in their gazes as their eyes slid over his tusks (before he started filing them down) and the green of his skin. He had always felt each look like a blow, flinching under the weight of it. And then eventually he saw the same look in his own eyes whenever he caught sight of his reflection.

Jester had never looked him that way. From the first, her eyes had shone bright – curious, sometimes awed, and always happy to see him. It had always amazed him, to see her look at him like that. And then lately there had been something else, something tender and soft that he wasn’t able to put a name to but that made him feel warmed from the inside out.

The thought of all that being replaced by fear is one he didn’t want to contemplate.

“Yes.” Yasha shrugged, folding her arms. Usually she was quiet, steady presence, but there was a new energy about her tonight, in a way that made Fjord half expect to see little sparks of electricity dancing over her skin. It was something to do with the storm, he knew that, though he didn’t understand quite what it was. “You were hurting yourself, messing with something dangerous.”

“I suppose it … might not have been the smartest thing to do,” Fjord admitted slowly.

“No, it was not.”

Looking over, he saw a furrow had appeared between her eyebrows.

They had never talked about what had happened with the Iron Shepherds, but those few nights, locked in cages and huddling into each other for warmth and for comfort, had still forged a kind of unspoken bond. Not quite trust, though they had that too, but understanding. 

He didn’t think Yasha wanted to talk of it, any more than he did, but he suspected, at times, that she blamed herself – for being overpowered, for not being able to break free. For not being there for Molly.

His hand curled down to the sword at his belt.

“I didn’t …” he started, then paused, thinking through the words. “I never intended to put the rest of you at risk. I would never want that.”

Yasha looked sideways at him, and when she answered her voice was slow and thoughtful. “I do not think you would. But it is easy – too easy – to do things even when we do not intend it.”  
A show of past pain coloured her words. For a moment he was taken back to escaping the Yuan-Ti island, to her hand on his shoulder and her quiet advice: _Faith is a funny thing. It can lead to strength . . . or it can lead to terrible things._

“That’s true,” he murmured.

“You are my friend Fjord. I will help you and support you as much as I can.” Yasha turned to face him fully. “But I think you should be careful.”

“How so?”

She frowned. “You saw what Avantika was. That is not what you want to be, is it?” 

The thought of the elven woman was an uncomfortable one. Her calculating nature, her fervent belief and her desire had all unnerved him. But what had perhaps unnerved him most of all was the feeling, even now, of connection – the wonder of finding someone else who had the same dreams, who could help him understand what was happening to him. But even so –

“No.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

“Be careful you do not lose sight of that, in pursuit of other things,” Yasha said gently.

He saw again the swirl of red in the water around his hand as he pressed it to the table, but overlaying it this time was the image of a large gash in Avantika’s hand and a similar curling trail of blood around it.

A shiver ran down his spine.

“As for Jester,” Yasha continued, “If you do not want her to be scared, I suggest you go and talk to her.”

“… yeah. Yeah, I will. Thanks, Yasha.”

She nodded, then turned back towards the storm, while Fjord looked over to where Jester was still huddled on the beakhead. The sea stretched out behind her, smooth obsidian glass, and its vastness made her seem small where she perched on the wooden steps leading down to the lower part of the deck. She had shifted round a little now and was leaning back against the railing, head tilted up to look at the stars. Something in Fjord’s chest constricted as he watched her.

Taking a breath, he started across towards her. 

The creaking of his footsteps announced him; she glanced around and smiled when she recognised him. He noticed now, where even a few weeks ago he might not have, that it wasn’t quite a real smile; the corners of her mouth were pulled just a little too tight, and it didn’t reach her eyes. 

“Hey.” He dropped down to sit beside her on her step. It was a narrow fit for the two of them, so his leg pressed up against hers – the warmth and closeness made him flash back for a moment to being under water, his fingers desperately seeking Jester’s face, a knot of panic in his chest that was reflected in her eyes, bringing his lips down on to hers . . .  
He wondered if Jester was thinking something similar, because her eyes skittered down to their legs and then back up again.

That was something else they hadn’t talked about. 

Things did seem to be piling up.

“Hi, Fjord. Are you okay?”

“I was gonna ask you that,” he said, lips quirking up in a brief smile. “Things got, uh, kind weird back there, huh?”

Jester gave an airy shrug. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t cut my hand open.”

She spoke lightly, as if she was just teasing him as normal, but there was an edge beneath her words that made Fjord wince.

“About that -”

“Why?” She cut him off abruptly, watching him with wide, confused eyes. “Why did you do it?”

Awkwardly, he reached up to rub the back of his neck. Why had he done it? Away from it all, having seen the storm, it seemed far more obviously a bad idea. 

“I was … curious. I guess I thought maybe it had something to do with the orb, or … I don’t know,” he said slowly, honestly. He had only lied to Jester once and had regretted it immediately; he wouldn’t like to her now. “I just wanted to know what it did.”

“It was a table covered in _blood_ ,” Jester objected. 

“I can’t – I didn’t really think about it. It’s not like you’ve never acted on impulse.”

She speared him with a sour look. “I draw dicks on things. I don’t do weird blood rituals in underwater caves filled bodies when a creepy evil sea witch thing that can control ghosts is trying to kill us.”  
Fjord grimaced to hear her put it like that.

“You scared me, Fjord.” 

“Jess … I’m sorry.” His gaze dropped to is boots. It felt like a cold, icy hand had reached into his chest and frozen his insides. 

“What if it hadn’t stopped sucking your blood once it started? What if you had been really hurt and I didn’t have enough spells left to heal you?” 

Confused, he glanced back up again. “Huh?”

Jester reached out and grabbed his hand, unfurling his fingers to show the dark line that now smoothly bisected his palm in two. Gently, she ran her own finger down its length and then looked up at him, for once no mirth or teasing in her eyes at all. Just fear and sadness.

“You just – you cut your hand _right open_. It could have been really bad, Fjord.”

His heart gave an unsteady thump as he finally understood.

She wasn’t scared _of_ him.

She was scared _for_ him.

Curling his fingers around hers, he squeezed them tightly. “I’m sorry, Jester. Really. I was curious … but it was a stupid thing to do.”

“It was.” She nodded, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.

Fjord shifted slightly where he sat, so his body was turned more towards her and said in a low, fervent voice, “I’m really glad you were with me today. I can’t imagine going through all that without you.”

Something in her expression softened; the confusion and anxiety that had bordered on the edge of anger was smoothed away, leaving a kind of tender openness that made Fjord’s breath catch in his throat.

“Yeah?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I was … afraid, of what I might find down there. Seeing the ship again.”

Her head tilted curiously to one side. “You were?”

“I didn’t know what we would see. If there would be,” he paused and swallowed, “bodies that I recognised. If Vandrin . . . I don’t know if I could have done it if I didn’t know you were there with me. So thank you for being there, Jester.”

She gave a small, gentle smile, and this time it did reach her eyes, making them softly shine. “Of course.”

For a moment he hesitated, then added, “I don’t know what’ll come next, but I want you to be there for that, too.”

When she nodded, a wave of relief washed over him and something he hadn’t quite realised was tense began to relax. 

“I’m really sorry that I scared you.” 

“Just don’t do it again, okay?” With her free hand, Jester reached over and lightly poked him – and he knew then, as the world seemed to shift back into its rightful place beneath him, that they would be okay. 

“Tell you what, if you think I’m being stupid in the future, how ‘bout you use that spiritual lollipop to knock some sense into me?” 

She giggled. “Okay. I can do that.” 

That brightness he had come to rely on had returned to her face, and for a few long moments Fjord just let his eyes drift over her, taking it in. The moon had emerged overhead, giving Jester’s skin an almost silvery cast and making her violet eyes luminous. The wind was still teasing the ends of her hair, and making the thin chains that dangled from her horns jingle quietly. 

With a start, Fjord realised both that he was staring and that their fingers were still intertwined. He coughed and was about to make an excuse to leave, but Jester had clearly followed another train of thought as she looked at him and suddenly perked up.

“Oh! I almost forgot. I got some treasure from down here, but not a whole lot ‘cause, you know, I was kind of a little distracted …”

As she spoke she reached into a pocket and pulled out a small pile of gleaming platinum coins. Not many, as she had said, still worth a few hundred gold.

Another memory rose to the front of Fjord's mind, this time of _The Mist(ake)_ and a luminescent field of jellyfish, of Jester bathed in its glow, tears glimmering on her eyelashes and of the overwhelming need to say or do whatever her could to take them away. _I’ve heard on some of these islands there’s treasure. It’s hard to find, I’m not making any promises, but if we play our cards right and we take care of each other . . ._

He hadn’t been taking care of her. Not the way he should have been. 

He should have been looking with her, down below. Not messing about with tables and rituals he didn’t understand. 

“It’s still a start,” he offered, wanting to try and make for it. “And we’re not done exploring these islands yet.”

“That’s true,” she said. “There might be more.”

He nodded. “There might be a lot more. And we’re probably gonna have to wait at least a couple days while everything gets repaired.”

“So we could go exploring!”

“Yeah, why not?”

“That would be fun!”

Eagerly Jester started outlining plans and speculating about what they might find, and with a smile Fjord sat back and listened. At some point her hand slipped out of his so she could start gesturing broadly with both arms – but the warmth of her fingers lingered on so that hours later, in his bunk, when he stared down at his palm, he wasn’t thinking about the new scar that marked it, but about the feeling of Jester’s skin against his and the way her eyes shone in the starlight.


End file.
